Scary New York

Townhouse in Gramercy Park

"Living in New York is scary. Here I am living in this lovely townhouse, and when I walk outside I'm right in the middle of all the terrible things going on."
Neil Simon, Conversations with Neil Simon

What America Should Be

Midtown Manhattan

"New York is such a melting pot of so many worlds in one. That’s what America should be, to me. It should be a place that’s shared with whoever wants to explore and learn and grow."
Gigi Hadid, Variety

Civic Choreography

World Trade Center station

"To walk in New York is to enter a sprawling civic choreography with a cast of millions, and Ben falls effortlessly into its rhythms of haste, purpose, possibility. He knows the steps because he listens to the city call them out."
Tucker Shaw, When You Call My Name

Loving Life

Midtown Manhattan

"What I love most about New York: the range and diversity of human experience. For me, loving New York is loving life."
Ben Levy, New York Magazine

The Way to Survive New York

Penn Station

"The only way to survive New York is to leave it and miss it so much, you have to come back."
Sophie Auster, Grandlife.com

New York as a Character

SoHo

"New York is impossible not to see as a character. It is a place that demands you be in a relationship with it. It is a place I’ll never get tired of."
Naomi Krupitsky, Shondaland

Loud and Obnoxious Friend

East Village

"New York may annoy and infuriate you at times, but, to me, it's like a loud and obnoxious friend who you can never quite bring yourself to leave for too long."
Pat Farnack, The Little Red Book of New York Wisdom

The Opinion of Out-of-Towners

Port Authority Bus Terminal

"There's no one New York. There's multiple New Yorks. Anybody who sits and says 'I know New York' is from out of town."
Pete Hamill, quoted in The New York Daily News

The Queens English

5 Pointz

"You know, I do speak the Queens English. It's just the wrong Queens that's all."
Cyndi Lauper, quoted in Rock Love Quote

Ghosts on Every Corner

Hook & Ladder Company 8

"New York is still the only place in the world where I feel sane, despite the ever-changing state. It's the place that both inspires and disappoints, the place with the most ghosts on every corner, the place where anything can change tomorrow."
Nick Zinner, V Magazine

Self Love

Houston Street

"One of the appealing aspects of New York is its unabashed love affair with itself, its pride and confidence in its brashness, its bigness, its New Yorkness."
Prue Leith, Choral Society

Paris of America

Washington Square Park

"The city of New York is the Paris of America. There are other municipalities which are doing their best in their several ways to rival her, but it is toward New York that all the eyes in the country are turned, and from which they take suggestion as a cat laps milk."
Robert Grant, The Art of Living

Immigrants

Chinatown

"New York literally heaved with immigrants, as if all the world had been squeezed into one noisy, hectic city."
Mary Sharratt, Ecstasy

Growing Up in Brooklyn

Coney Island

"Growing up in Brooklyn is not for the faint of heart. It really made me who I am today. I feel like if you’re from Brooklyn, you can make it anywhere. I’ve traveled so many places in the world, and I’ve always found my way."

Siddiq Saunderson, Mr. Feel Good

Nowhere Else I'd Rather Be

Met Museum

"New York City. How can you not love her? It's the city of dreams. From the subway system that takes you anywhere you need to go, to the incredible museums at our fingertips. It's the city that never sleeps. Why would you want to be anywhere else?"
Ondine Jean-Baptiste, NYC Next

Elevated

Roosevelt Island Tram

"To be from New York is to be already elevated by its very attribution: must have the muster to survive the metropolitan sieve, must be good."
Mariah Bergeron, The Chart

Greatest City for Lunch

Kips Bay

"New York is the greatest city in the world for lunch: That's the gregarious time. And when that first martini hits the liver like a silver bullet, there is a sigh of contentment that can be heard in Dubuque."
William Emerson Jr, The Quotable Drunkard

Dollars and Cents

14th Street subway station

"New York does not so much as stop to reckon what happiness truly is; she is too engrossed with her materialistic provender, the things which can be judged in terms of dollars and cents, which can be bought and sold; the things which, in the destroyed or partially destroyed cities of Europe, the very hand of distraction has proved to be but ephemeral baubles after all."
Dana Gatlin, McClure's Magazine

Impossible New York

Queensboro Bridge and Rooseveld Island

"To the entire living, breathing, pulsating city of New York: I would be nothing without you. You are impossible to live in and impossible to live without."
Kate Spencer, In a New York Minute

New York System

Grand Central Terminal

"New Yorkers don’t really care, in the best way, if you’re in the city. The thing I love so much about this place: You are here, and you join the machine, and you figure out how to work within the system. New York is its own system, and you come and go, and it doesn’t really notice, and that’s OK."
Amy Poehler, Page Six

Paths and Possibilities

Baruch Way

"Life with Mom, life in New York, was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city's beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors."
Emily Henry, Book Lovers